(ANSA) – ROME, NOV 23 – There is also the great exhibition dedicated to Vermeer, “Johannes Vermeer. On Reflection”, scheduled these days at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, among the cultural events forced to close these days in Saxony due to the worrying new wave of Covid. This was reported by The Art Newspaper magazine, recalling that the exceptional exhibition – which for the first time brought together ten of the 35 existing paintings by the great Delft painter – had already been postponed twice, in recent months again due to the restrictions imposed by pandemic, and in any case it cannot be extended beyond 2 January.
Opened on 10 September last, the Dresden exhibition was organized to present the restoration of one of Vermeer’s most important masterpieces, The Girl Reading a Letter in Front of an Open Window. With a job that took two years of effort, the experts hired by the German museum (owner of the work for over 250 years) removed a paint applied to the background of the picture after the painter’s death. And the restoration unearthed a large standing Cupid, a presence that had been revealed as early as 1979 by an X-ray examination of the painting. Initially it was thought that the roofing was due to a rethinking of the painter, but other analyzes, made in more recent years, had revealed that the roofing was much later. Hence the decision for the restoration: “With the recovery of Cupid in the background, one can recognize the actual intention of the Delft painter – explained in the days of the opening Stephan Koja, director of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister – Beyond the apparently amorous context , it is a fundamental statement about the nature of true love. We now understand it as a key image of his work. ” The world had applauded, although there was no shortage of criticism on social media in those days.
After just over two months of opening, however, the exhibition was forced to close, as has happened for all museums and galleries in Saxony. The detention – as the alert on the museum website also reports – should last until December 12, but it does not necessarily mean that it will not be renewed, given the increasingly alarming health situation in that part of Germany. With a weekly incidence rate of close to 1,000 infections per 100,000 people, Saxony, which has also banned Christmas markets and brought restaurant closures to 8 pm, is the first German laender to close museums in the fourth wave of the pandemic.
In 2022, a version of the Vermeer exhibition should open at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum on January 22, and then move, again in Japan, to Sapporo, Osaka and Sendai. “A very unfortunate but inevitable closure,” commented Marion Ackermann, the director of the Dresden Museum Authority. After all, he added, “the situation for the people in Saxony is dramatic, we must remain united as a community. This means limiting public life, but also rapidly increasing the percentage of vaccinated”. (HANDLE).
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Source From: Ansa
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